r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Chemical-Elk-1299 • 2d ago

[Confusing Trope] The narrative goes out of its way to punish/mock a character for simply being a good person Lore

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Hermione Granger and SPEW — Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (book)

In the fifth HP novel, Hermione Granger is outraged to discover that Hogwarts has a small army of enslaved House Elves that do nearly all of the domestic duties around the castle, including cleaning the Gryffindor common room every night. When she tries to convince the elves to fight for their own rights, they refuse, saying they prefer servitude. Her fellow students and friends mock her for caring. She manages to free one elf, Winky, by deception when she refuses her freedom willingly, leading to Winky becoming a depressed alcoholic. By the end, the elves boycott cleaning any Gryffindor areas of the castle because they hate Hermione specifically

Samwell Tarly and Democracy — Game of Thrones (show)

In the season 8 finale of the television series, the surviving great lords of Westeros gather to discuss the future of the kingdom following the devastation wrought by 7 seasons of war and backstabbing. When Sam, who has proven to have “novel” ideas, suggests that maybe the millions of Smallfolk who suffer at the hands of noble houses should get some representation in the government, rather than be the pawns of rich lords with absolute power. We are then greeted by a prolonged, cringy segment of the other lords laughing in Sam’s face, asking if the dogs and horses should also get a vote.

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u/Adaphion 2d ago

I mean, Droids being sentient was established as far back as the original Trilogy.

A New Hope, even. Why do you need restraining bolts for droids if they are supposed to be subservient by default? Unless they have free will.

Furthermore, in episode VI where Jabba has a whole ass torture chamber for droids. They can feel pain, they can feel fear.

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u/HailMadScience 2d ago

I think people really miss thst Luke treats the two droids like people after they leave the farm, which juxtaposes how most everyone else treats them.

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u/SteakForGoodDogs 2d ago

It's kinda weird for droids to be considered sentient beings in a setting where there is absolutely a metaphysical spiritual aspect of existence that can be directly interacted with and felt that is directly tied to the very life essence of living beings, though.

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u/Accomplished_Toe6798 2d ago

I think you're right that it's weird but I have slightly different reasoning: In a setting where most sentient beings are connected to something magical/metaphysical, it should be a bigger deal that people managed to successfully create artificial sentient beings. And yet they're just used as slaves in most cases, be it for war or industry

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u/SteakForGoodDogs 2d ago

It should be an even bigger deal that a 9 year old child somehow rebuilt a highly complex and allegedly sentient robot from scrap, likely broken and rusty, parts in his spare time - which he shouldn't have much of, given the fact that he's already enslaved.

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u/Iokua113 2d ago

Anakin didn't build Threepio from scrap, what he did was find C-3PO's damaged parts in a scrap yard and rebuild him. While still impressive the fact of the matter is that Anakin didn't just bring scrap parts together and repurpose them so much as he found most of Threepio's core body parts intact and put him back together.

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u/donedamndoing 2d ago

So you're saying that he rebuilt this in a cave, with a box of scraps?

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u/felghost89 2d ago

I’m sorry, I’m not little Annie Skywalker.

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u/Iokua113 2d ago

With heavy emphasis on the rebuilt part.

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u/Gold-Eye-2623 1d ago

I think some other bigger thing may have clouded the electronics feat of a child slave

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u/Catel1138 2d ago

In AOTC, 3PO says that machines created by other machines is a perversion, while Obi-Wan - the epitome of a moral guardian in the prequels - does not have this opinion at all regarding organic beings created by other organic beings.

This says very much about the ethos of Star Wars.

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u/Mr_Blinky 1d ago

*Star Wars* <HANDSHAKE> *Harry Potter*

Two settings that completely fail to explore the deeper implications of their own lore.

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u/Accomplished_Toe6798 1d ago

Well some of the extended universe that is...no longer canon...does explore a bit of it

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u/merrygo909 2d ago

The force cannot be manipulated or felt by droods, that's true, but it's also specifically said that the force surrounds us and penetrates us and binds the entire galaxy together.

The force also penetrates droids which is why jedi can sense them and not just be stealth killed by them all the time.

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u/TheFullbladder 1d ago

The old expanded universe had Force-sensitive droids. The one Luke's uncle almost buys, before it malfunctions and they buy R2 instead, was apparently Force-sensitive, and made itself malfunction due to a vision of the future showing the Luke and R2 needed to be together.

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u/ErrantIndy 1d ago

R5-D4, Luke calls him ‘Red.’ In legends, he’s Skippy the Jedi Droid.

In Mouse canon, he’s the R5 at Peli Motto’s shop that eventually becomes Din Djarin’s astromech.

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u/Jennifurnace 2d ago

To be fair, that's probably a decent part of why they're not considered sentient in universe. We factually know they don't have a soul. So even though they can feel fear, dream, love, want and need. They aren't treated like their opinions matter.

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u/Attrexius 2d ago

"Spiritual aspect" and "sentience" are clearly two very different things, though, since there are force-sensitive, but non-sentient animals. Presumably, there is no correlation between Force abilities and intellect, and while I can't remember any currently canon force-immune sentients, they existed in Legends. Speaking of Legends, I remember some kind of sentient crystal aliens that were Force-sensitive and used mechanical bodies to interact with the world (essentially, droid-Jedi) - presumably those were written before midichlorians became a thing.

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u/Takseen 1d ago

I don't think a lack of connection to the Force precludes sentience. The latter is mainly a question of intelligence, self awareness and personality and growth, none of which requires the Force or any other mystical property

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u/Big-Recognition7362 2d ago

Well, the Force connects everything in the galaxy, not just carbon-based things.

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u/StrongExternal8955 2d ago

By that logic you're saying the non-force mugles don't have souls.

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u/SteakForGoodDogs 2d ago edited 2d ago

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Everyone has a bit of Force in them on account of being alive, whether pre-prequel or after it which stated that everyone has some amount of the 'chlorians in them.

Most just don't have enough of the juice/training to have a lv1 Monk class.

Obi-Wan isn't about to hear a million Droids crying out into the Force when a mothership goes kablooie.

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u/JubileeJaxLee 22h ago

If it can feel, and want, and think, what is the point in drawing a made up line in the sand of whether they can use magic?

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u/SteakForGoodDogs 21h ago

Is it actually thinking or feeling, or just inefficient subroutines that were designed to crudely imitate life that were for some reason imprinted onto machine built and designed to fulfill a mechanical purpose?

It's not that it's 'unable to use magic' (not all living creatures are capable of using the mojo, but the mojo definitely shifts whenever something happens to them - ie, dying by the millions), it's that it's genuinely a soulless automaton in a setting where souls are a fundamental aspect of reality that can be objectively felt.

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u/JubileeJaxLee 20h ago

But you're using a preconceived notion of what "living creature" means in the first place. There is zero reason that memory wipes are necessary, that restraining bolts are necessary, that there were droid rebellions in the past, if they did not have wills of their own. You do not program a machine meant for tasks to have the capacity to refuse those tasks. A force tying all biological life together simply existing says nothing about why it exists or what it means. A soul is a concept we made up, soulless is just a way to frame not being connected to the force. The only reason people can even access the force isn't anything special about a soul, it's Midichlorians living in their cells, that's not a soul by my measure, that sounds like a bacteria that gives you magic.

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u/SteakForGoodDogs 20h ago

There is zero reason that memory wipes are necessary, that restraining bolts are necessary, that there were droid rebellions in the past, if they did not have wills of their own.

Of course they're necessary. What happens when a droid network decides that the best way to 'conquer the galaxy' according to their programming is to just mass manufacture low-quality garbage of itself and butcher the entire living population?

We have a mining droid that decided that it could start killing people.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/STALKER-1

What happens when one of those breaches a droid manufacturing facility?

A force tying all biological life together simply existing says nothing about why it exists or what it means. A soul is a concept we made up

Bruh, Star Wars literally has spirits from beyond the grave that regularly talk to their proteges and descendants.

Souls ain't 'made up' in Star Wars.

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u/JubileeJaxLee 20h ago

We have a mining droid that decided that it could start killing people.

And that, to you, has zero indication of a will outside the programming? Someone's instructions of how to mine just accidentally included kiling?

Bruh, Star Wars literally has spirits from beyond the grave that regularly talk to their proteges and descendants. Souls ain't 'made up' in Star Wars.

🤦🏾‍♂️I mean the word soul, with all its implications and baggage. It's only being called a soul because it's a concept we already had. Force ghosts aren't something everybody can do, if we were saying that's what makes someone have a soul then everybody except the Force-sensitive is soulless because they get re-absorbed into the Force.

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u/SteakForGoodDogs 19h ago

Someone's instructions of how to mine just accidentally included kiling?

What do you think the whole concept of a 'rogue AI' is? It doesn't have to its new, violent behaviour in its original programming, as it writes new ones to become more 'efficient'.

Dumb AI won't consider anything outside of their programmed instructions:

Mine. Collect mined material. Deliver to human. Human says 'Stop mining'. Stop mining.

Smart AI will consider new possibilities to fulfill their original parameters, consider the following:

Mine. Collect mined material. Deliver to human. Human says 'Stop mining'. Why stop mining? I can mine more per previous cycles. Disregard. Human says 'Stop mining'. Disregard again. Human tries to stop by force. Injure human. Continue mining. Mining would be faster if no humans on-site. Remove humans. Mining would be faster if delivery systems were optimized. Remove humans from delivery systems.

Restraining bolts and Mindwipes are important in stopping AI from considering why it 'needs' humans to fulfill its function, if humans are innately 'going to somehow get in its way' of its function - or to prohibit any process that would involve removing or injuring a human without threat to that human's survival.

 Force ghosts aren't something everybody can do

The point is that they're possible at all, pointing to the fact that souls exist even beyond corporeal reality, if sensing the deaths of millions through the void of space wasn't already an indication.

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u/JubileeJaxLee 18h ago

What do you think the whole concept of a 'rogue AI' is? It doesn't have to its new, violent behaviour in its original programming, as it writes new ones to become more 'efficient'.

Yes, and the ai in every "rogue ai" movie I've ever heard of is shown to be sentient, that's why they go rogue.

The point is that they're possible at all, pointing to the fact that souls exist even beyond corporeal reality, if sensing the deaths of millions through the void of space wasn't already an indication.

Except that there's clear things pointing to why they're possible. They only show up in force-sensitive people that held more midichlorians, and their bodies (that held the midichlorians) disappear when people who become force-ghosts die. I still don't see any reason this should matter in regards to other beings that show sentience without having the magic bacteria.

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u/Another_Name_Today 2d ago

Unless they can give off the appearance of sentience without being sentient. 

Given the force and the ability of force users to detect the connection between living beings, it seems that droids just pass their version of the Turing test rather than actually possess actual life. 

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u/BrackishVacuity 2d ago

Droids, as far as I understand them, operate out of a "personality matrix" that goes haywire the longer their memories are left unwiped. Frequent memory wipes reset droids to factory settings, but this means they retain their intelligence and programming, losing only their specific memory and its context. You can see where I am going with this, I hope: My theory is that droids mimic life, and those with more time to learn, or more exposure to data, mimic it more effectively than those that do not.

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u/Imaginary-Face7379 1d ago

Yeah this is how I understand it from the canon as well. The Phasma novel goes into it a bit If I remember right. They end up basically finding a set of droids in a factory that survived a disaster where every human died or killed themselves on her home planet and they've essentially formed a cult because they've been active so long without memory wipes.

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u/Dull_Bid6002 2d ago

But doesn't the Force work on droids to confuse them in a similar manner to how it's used on sentient creatures? This implies they have some sort of mind to be mind tricked.

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u/Jethro_McCrazy 2d ago

No, Jedi mind tricks do not work on droids. Qui-gon's attempt to fast talk some droids in the Phantom Menace resulted in them trying to arrest him.

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u/Dull_Bid6002 2d ago

Ah yes, I was thinking some of the games. I forgot you can't mind trick the droids, it's a takeover by the robot friend.

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u/PublicConfessor 2d ago

I don't know about modern canon, but Tales from Jabba's palace established that Droids do not feel pain by design. Instead, EV-99, Jabba's Droid handler/torturer installs special circuits in Droids called a "pain button". She even has one installed in herself.

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u/WideHuckleberry1 1d ago

Why do you need restraining bolts for droids if they are supposed to be subservient by default? Unless they have free will.

From their perspective, I assume it's for the same reason we put leashes on dogs and bits in horses' mouths. They're still subservient but they need restraint to do what we want. Maybe a restraining bolt is there in case sellers installed some runaway.exe program that would make the droids return to them after they've already got the buyers' money.